Endgame optimisation

Abstract

Within the defence industry, there is the need to provide an improvement in the efficiency (performance) of a missile system. The present generation of missile systems are sub-optimal in many currently considered scenarios. Scenarios include both anti-air and ground attack domains and these have to allow for an increased usage of stealth, more effective countermeasures, and better mission survivability by making use of redundancy in subsystems. There are many methods by which this improvement in efficiency can be achieved The traditional approach to improving the lethality of a missile has been to concentrate efforts in the guidance and control systems to improve accuracy and agility.

This thesis considers how optimizing the endgame, the final few milliseconds before detonation, can yield improvements in overall lethality. This is achieved using traditional optimisation techniques and has investigated possible missile warhead fusing strategies which may be used in order to provide robust, high lethality engagement conditions for an air-to-air missile system. The development of various fusing strategies has been performed based on observations made during the undertaking of this research. This included development of fusing rules used for the missile warhead and the development of advanced fusing algorithms that look at past missile fly-out and lethality data to aid the decision process of when to fuse the missile.

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Identifiers

ORCID for Andrew J. Chipperfield: orcid.org/0000-0002-3026-9890

ORCID for Andrew J. Keane: orcid.org/0000-0001-7993-1569

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